Quotes About Bertrand Russell

Logic was, formerly, the art of drawing inferences; it has now become the art of abstaining from inferences, since it has appeared that the inferences we feel naturally inclined to make are hardly ever valid.

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

Hume is thus led to the view that, when we say 'A causes B', we mean only that A and B are constantly conjoined in fact, not that there is some necessary connection between them.

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.....Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion has gone hand-in-hand.

To preserve hope in our world makes calls upon our intelligence and our energy. In those who despair it is frequently the energy that is lacking.

There is in Descartes an unresolved dualism between what he learnt from contemporary science and the scholasticism that he had been taught at La Flèche. This led him into inconsistencies, but it also made him more rich in fruitful ideas than any completely logical philosopher could have been. Consistency might have made him merely the founder of a new scholasticism, whereas inconsistency made him the source of two important but divergent schools of philosophy.

The pursuit of social success, in the form of prestige or power or both, is the most important obstacle in a competitive society.

All joy in true thought is part of the intellectual love of God

His most important books are his two Logics, and these must be understood if the reasons for his views on other subjects are to be rightly apprehended.

In his philosophy, nothing is held to be quite true, and nothing quite false; what can be uttered has only a limited truth, and, since men must talk, we cannot blame them for not speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The best we can do, according to Bradley, is to say things that are "not intellectually corrigible"—further progress is only possible through a synthesis of thought and feeling, which, when achieved, will lead to our saying nothing.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. Bertrand Russell

The accusation of metaphysics has become in philosophy something like the accusation of being a security risk in the public service. I do not for my part know what is meant by the word 'metaphysics'. The only definition I have found that fits all cases is: 'a philosophical opinion not held by the present author'.

The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific organization of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world.

I do not like mystical language, and yet I hardly know how to express what I mean without employing phrases that sound poetic rather than scientific.

But in fact, while some aspects of history can be made more or less scientific, and while it is important to do this wherever it is possible, the material is too complex to be reduced to scientific laws at present, and probably for centuries to come.

In this lies Man's true freedom: in determination to worship only the God created by our own love of the good.

But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.

In relation to any political doctrine there are two questions to be asked: (1) Are its theoretical tenets true? (2) Is its practical policy likely to increase human happiness? For my part, I think the theoretical tenets of Communism are false, and I think its practical maxims are such as to produce an immeasurable increase of human misery.

I regard love as one of the most important things in human life, and I regard any system as bad which interferes unnecessarily with its free development.

Frege's work it followed that arithmetic, and pure mathematics generally, is nothing but a prolongation of deductive logic. This disproved Kant's theory that arithmetical propositions are 'synthetic' and involve a reference to time. The development of pure mathematics from logic was set forth in detail in Principia Mathematica, by Whitehead and myself.

while some aspects of history can be made more or less scientific, and while it is important to do this wherever it is possible, the material is too complex to be reduced to scientific laws at present, and probably for centuries to come.

The immense majority of even the noblest persons' actions have self-regarding motives, nor is this to be regretted, since if it were otherwise, the human race could not survive. A man who spent his time seeing that others were fed and forgot to feed himself would perish.

Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life. ???